Tea party policy causing Florida sinkholes

A couple interesting articles in the Tampa Bay times about how Florida Governor Ricks Scott's campaign promise to deregulate environmental protections have born fruit. First, remember those sinkholes eats up peoples homes? Ya..apparently that is due to overuse of the ground water by farmers. Business get a permit to pump X gallons of water from the underground aquifer and ever since Rick Scott replaced the heads of the agencies who monitor and enforce violation, its really been more about gentle suggestions and asking nicely rather than the fines that are supposed to be levied on violators. There is another story in South Florida about farmers overusing water resources to fight tree diseases, which apparently has no scientific backing whatsoever, to which the State replied we cant fine them because "they were well intended". And of course the farmers have kept overusing even after being told nicely not to since they know the regulators are in their pocket. And then there is this wonderful story about a company called Moasic using millions of gallons of aquifer water to dilute the pollution it spills into the waterways to get around pollution laws.

Regulatory bodies really need to be independent of whoever is governor and the politics of the day.

State wants stability regardless of quality of service

The Huffington post is doing a great series of articles on Youth "facilities" in Florida. My take on this is it doesn't work to privatize jobs no one wants to do and when you do you get so few applicants you are stuck with the very few who apply. Florida is stuck saying we need these kids housed and fed en mass (forget rehabilitated), but taxpayers wont let the State do it cause that looks like "more government" and only a few people want this job, because it requires all sorts of things regular business want nothing to do with. These private businesses who manage the bear minimums become too big to fail in their respective communities since no one else wants/is equipped to do the job.

All I can say is that I've been in an American court room where a judge commit a child to one of these private institutions based on the written advice of a doctor from another private institution, while not providing any competent legal council to argue the child's desire not to be incarcerated. Oh and then there was the judge in Pennsylvania caught doing this for $$.. and the prescription drug companies getting in on this jailing game too

So how do you fire someone managing the care for 40,000 kids ?

Jail doesnt help anyone except the jail companies and the people they spread the wealth too(doctors, lawyers, cops). Policing is a basic function of government and need to be brought back under the pubic umbrella were there is more transparency and better methods to promote change than all or nothing contract/no contract.

No games for old men (on the ps3)

In order to see how the other half (console gamers) lives I went out and picked up a ps3 and a couple games that I thought might interest me. I purposely avoided gratuitously violent games like GTA or Call of Duty.

I have 26 games currently uploaded from Steam on my computer and of those 4 involve some of sort of personal humaniod avatar punching/hitting casting at etc a humanoid. And of those 4 only one is semi realistic and the other 3 are cartoon-like/artisticly rendered worlds.

Of the 10 games I found for ps3 that I thought might interest me, only 1, MLB "The Show" doesn't directly involve the player pressing buttons to punch/hit/kick etc a realistic humanoid character.And all of the fighting is realistically rendered and human(oid) on human(oid). Even Ratchet and Clank (playstations answer to mario) involves constantly shooting people to reach the objective. 

Having been brought up on super mario brother and civilizations, and not being a "gun guy", I really have no interest in playing games where you physically fight your way to the goal. And the way you get to your goal, the way you win, is starkly different from computer to console.

While the computer hosts all sorts of different types of games and the games I like the most are strategy games. It shocked me to find that in the entire ps3 library of over 300+ different games I know of only 1 (Civilizations:revolution) that is a strategy title. 1 thinking games 2200 billion press the button to hit someone in the face inorder to win games.  

Anyone who doesn't think modern console video games, even the non-shooters like lego batman, arnt training the brains of our kids that they need to punch, kick or shoot in order to win is fooling themselves.

Feed America=feed walmart?

Larger food banks no longer accept donations of food from individuals. This is because its a pain in the butt for them to inventory, package and store a multitude of small individually donated items. To their budget it makes more sense to let Walmart deal with warehousing the food and just go shopping with donated cash when you need inventory.

Large food banks, like Feed America, provide the majority of their services to the public school system. They supplement and often run the before and after school lunch programs. The intent of these programs is to provide additional food to kids whos working parents dobnt have the time to cook breakfast and dinner at home or take them to Mcdonalds.

So follow my logic train here. The government (and private doners) gives millions (billions) of dollars to food banks(*cough* middle men), which they spend at Walmart (and other large volume grocers) buying food to feed 10s of millions of American kids. Children who's parents cant afford to feed them or dont have the time to feed them because their wage is low and needs to be supplemented with the second job. A wage kept low by Walmart so its prices stay low and customers (the largest buyer of food being the government and/or private food banks) dont shop elsewhere.

Columbus Day is BS

Ya..been neglecting the blog this last month or two. Sorry. Here is a great article about Columbus day and all the lies and dishonest history it enforces.

I would recommend anyone interested in the true exploration of North America by non natives google the author Gavin Menzie. His books are like a treasure hunt for clues/evidence that you can actually visit and confirm.

Beautiful Alaska video

Alaska The Nutrient Cycle from Paul Klaver on Vimeo.